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cm2012

You are about 20 years out of date. Modern politicians get almost all of their funding from small donations, in other words, from passionate partisans who care about culture war issues.

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I find that difficult to believe, having been involved in political campaigning (not in EU or USA).

Have you evidence?

Sure. Here is us politician finances from 2024. Note that the vast majority is from individual contributors.

Only 6-8% of us political funding in 2024 came from business-PAC contributions.

https://www.fec.gov/resources/campaign-finance-statistics/20...

Further splits here: https://www.fec.gov/resources/campaign-finance-statistics/20...

There are exceptions to this of course but most politicians answer to voters much much much more than big business.

That's because megadonors don't give to candidates directly? In order to trigger the unlimited campaign finance guaranteed by citizens united, you create a super pac. They can't openly coordinate with the candidate.

If you add in all super PACs and outside spending, it would make up roughly 30-35% of the overall expidenture. That's a lot but super PAC money is worth much less to a campaign compared to donations because it can't be used for core expenses like labor.

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